by Olivia Gates
Turning away from futile musings, she surrendered to the splendor all around her as they reached a gigantic patio that surrounded the villa. On one side it overlooked the magnificent property that was part vineyards and orchards and part landscaped gardens, with the valley and mountains in the distance, and on the other side, the breathtaking sea and shoreline.
The patio led to the highest area overlooking the sea, a massive terrace garden that was illuminated by golden lights planted everywhere like luminescent flowers.
He took her inside and she got rapid impressions of the interior as he swept her to the quarters he’d designated for her.
She felt everything had been chosen with an eye for uniqueness and comfort, simplicity and grandeur, blending sweeping lines and spaces with bold wall colors, honey-colored ceilings and furniture that complemented both. French doors and colonial pillars merged seamlessly with the natural beauty of hardwood floors accentuated by marble and granite. She knew she could spend weeks poring over every detail, but in its whole, she felt this was a place this formidable man had wanted his family to love, to feel at home in from the moment they set foot in it. She knew she did. And she hadn’t technically set foot in it yet.
Then she did. He opened a door, wheeled her in then helped her out of the chair. She stood as he wheeled the chair to one side, walked out to haul in two huge suitcases that had evidently been transported right behind them.
He placed one on the floor and the other on a luggage stand at the far side of the room, which opened into a full-fledged dressing room.
She stood mesmerized as he walked back to her.
He was overwhelming. A few levels beyond that.
He stopped before her, took her hand. She felt as though it burst in flames. “I promise you a detailed tour of the place. Later. In stages. Now you have to rest. Doctor’s orders.”
With that he gave her hand a gentle press, turned and left.
The moment the door clicked closed behind him, she staggered to lean on it, exhaled a choppy breath. Doctor’s orders. Her doctor…
She bit her lip. Hours ago, she’d consigned her husband’s body to his parents. And all she could think of was Rodrigo. There wasn’t even a twinge of guilt toward Mel. There was sadness, but it was the sadness she knew she’d feel for any human being’s disability and death. For his loved ones’ mourning. Nothing more.
What was wrong with her? What had been wrong with her and Mel? Or was there more wrong with her mind than she believed?
Her lungs deflated on a dejected exhalation.
All she could do now was never let any of those who’d loved and lost Mel know how unaffected by his loss she was. What did it matter what she felt in the secrecy of her heart and mind if she never let the knowledge out to hurt others? She couldn’t change the way she felt, should stop feeling bad about it. It served no purpose, did no one any good.
With that rationalization reached, she felt as if a ten-pound rock had been lifted off her heart. Air flowed into her lungs all of a sudden, just as the lovely surroundings registered in her appreciation centers.
The room-if a thirty-something-by forty-something-foot space with a twelve-foot ceiling could be called that-was a manifestation of the ultimate in personal space.
With walls painted sea-blue and green, furniture of dark mahogany and ivory ceilings and accents, it was soothingly lit by golden lamps of the side and standing variety. French doors were draped in gauzy powder-blue curtains that undulated in the twilight sea breeze, wafting scents of salt and freshness with each billow. She sighed away her draining tension and pushed from the wood-paneled door.
She crossed the gleaming hardwood floor to the suitcases. They were more evidence of Rodrigo’s all-inclusive care. She was certain she’d never owned anything so exquisite. She wondered what he’d filled them with. If the outfit she had on was any indication, no doubt an array of haute couture and designer items, molding to her exact shape and appealing to her specific tastes.
She tried to move the one on the floor, just to set it on its wheels. Frantic pounding boomed in her head. Man-what had he gotten her to wear? Steel armor in every shade? And he’d made the cases look weightless when he’d hauled them both in, simultaneously. She tugged again. “¡Parada!”
She swung around at the booming order, the pounding in her head crashing down her spine to settle behind her ribs.
A robust, unmistakably Spanish woman in her late thirties was plowing her way across the room, alarm and displeasure furrowing the openness of her olive-skinned beauty.
“Rodrigo warned me that you’d give me a hard time.”
Cybele blinked at the woman as she slapped her hand away from the suitcase’s handle and hauled it onto the king-sized, draped-in-ivory-silk bed. She, too, made it look so light. Those Spaniards-uh, Catalans-must have something potent in their water.
The woman rounded on her, vitality and ire radiating from every line. Even her shoulder-length, glossy dark brown hair seemed pissed off. “He told me that you’d be a troublesome charge, and from the way you were trying to bust your surgery scar open, he was right. As he always is.”
So it wasn’t only she who thought he was always practically infallible. Her lips tugged as she tried to placate the force of nature before her. “I don’t have a surgery scar to bust, thanks to Rodrigo’s revolutionary minimally invasive approach.”
“You have things in there-” the woman stabbed a finger in the air pointing at Cybele’s head “-you can bust, no? What you busted before, necessitating such an approach.”
From the throb of pain that was only now abating, she had to concede that. She’d probably raised her intracranial pressure tenfold trying to drag that behemoth of a bag. As she shrugged, she remembered Rodrigo telling her something.
She’d been too busy watching his lips wrap around each syllable to translate the words into an actual meaning. She now replayed them, made sense of them.
Rodrigo had said Consuelo, his cousin who lived here with her husband and three children and managed the place for him, would be with her shortly to see to her every need and to the correct and timely discharge of his instructions. She’d only nodded then, lost in his eyes. She now realized what he’d meant.
He didn’t trust her to follow his instructions, was assigning a deputy to enforce their execution. And he certainly knew how to pick his wardens.
She stuck out her hand with a smile tugging at her lips. “You must be Consuelo. Rodrigo told me to expect you.”
Consuelo took her hand, only to drag her forward and kiss her full on both cheeks.
Cybele didn’t know what stunned her more, the affectionate salute, or Consuelo resuming her disapproval afterward.
Consuelo folded her arms over an ample bosom artfully contained and displayed by her floral dress with the lime background. “Seems Rodrigo didn’t really tell you what to expect. So let me make it clear. I received you battered and bruised. I’m handing you back in tip-top shape. I won’t put up with you not following Rodrigo’s orders. I’m not soft and lenient like him.”
“Soft and lenient?” Cybele squeaked her incredulity. Then she coughed it out on a laugh. “I wasn’t aware there were two Rodrigos. I met the intractable and inexorable one.”
Consuelo tutted. “If you think Rodrigo intractable and inexorable, wait till you’ve been around me twenty-four hours.”
“Oh, the first twenty-four seconds were a sufficient demo.”
Consuelo gave her an assessing look, shrewdness simmering in her dark chocolate eyes. “I know your type. A woman who wants to do everything for herself, says she can handle it when she can’t, keeps going when she shouldn’t, caring nothing about what it costs her, and it’s all because she dreads being an imposition, because she hates accepting help even when she dearly needs it.”
“Whoa. Spoken like an expert.”
“¡Maldita sea, es cierto!-that’s right. It takes one mule-headed, aggravatingly independent woman to know another.”
&
nbsp; Another laugh overpowered Cybele. “Busted.”
“Sí, you are. And I’m reporting your reckless behavior to Rodrigo. He’ll probably have you chained to my wrist by your good arm until he gives you a clean bill of health.”
“Not that I wouldn’t be honored to have you as my…uh, keeper, but can I bribe you into keeping silent?”
“You can. And you know how.”
“I don’t try to lift rock-filled suitcases again?”
“And do everything I say. When I say it.”
“Uh…on second thought, I’ll take my chances with Rodrigo.”
“Ha. Try another one. Now hop to it. Rodrigo told me what kind of day-what kind of week you’ve had. You’re doing absolutely nothing but sleeping and resting for the next one. And eating. You look like you’re about to vanish.”
Cybele laughed as she whimsically peered down at her much lesser endowments. She could see how they were next to insubstantial by the super-lush Consuelo’s standards.
This woman would be good for her. As she was sure Rodrigo had known she would be. Every word out of her mouth tickled funny bones Cybele hadn’t known existed.
Consuelo hooked her arm through Cybele’s good one, walked her to bed then headed alone to the en suite bathroom. She talked all the time while she ran a bubble bath, emptied the suitcases, sorted everything in the dressing room, and laid out what Cybele would wear to bed. Cybele loved listening to her husky, vibrant voice delivering perfect English dipped in the molasses of her all-out Catalan accent. By the time she led Cybele to the all-marble-and-gold-fixtures, salonlike bathroom, she’d told her her life story. At least, everything that had happened since she and her husband had become Rodrigo’s house-and groundskeepers.
Cybele insisted she could take it from there. Consuelo insisted on leaving the door open. Cybele insisted she’d call out to prove she was still awake. Consuelo threatened to barge in after a minute’s silence. Cybele countered she could sing to prove her wakefulness then everyone within hearing distance would suffer the consequences of Consuelo’s overprotection.
Guffawing and belting out a string of amused Catalan, Consuelo finally exited the bathroom.
Grinning, Cybele undressed. The grin dissolved as she stared at herself in the mirror above the double sinks’ marble platform.
She had a feeling there’d once been more of her. Had she lost weight? A lot of it? Recently? Because she’d been unhappy? If she had been, why had she planned a pregnancy and a second honeymoon with Mel? What did Rodrigo think of the way she looked? Not now, since she looked like crap, but before? Was she his type? Did he have a type? Did he have a woman now? More than one…?
Oh, God…she couldn’t finish a thought without it settling back on him, could she?
She clamped down on the spasm that twisted through her at the idea, the images of him with a woman…any other woman.
How insane was it to be jealous, when up to eight days ago she’d been married to his brother?
She exhaled a shuddering breath and stepped into the warm, jasmine-and-lilac-scented water. She moaned as she submerged her whole body, felt as if every deep-seated ache surged to her surface, bled through her pores to mingle with the bubbles and fluid silk that enveloped her.
She raised her eyes, realized the widescreen window was right across from her, showcasing a masterpiece of heavenly proportions. Magnificent cloud formations in every gradation of silver morphing across a darkening royal blue sky and an incandescent half moon.
Rodrigo’s face superimposed itself on the splendor, his voice over the lapping of water around her, the swishing of blood in her ears. She shut her eyes, tried to sever the spell. “Enough.”
Consuelo’s yelled “¿Qué?” jerked Cybele’s eyes open.
Mortification threatened to boil her bathwater.
God-she’d cried that out loud.
She called out the first thing that came to her, to explain away her outburst. “Uh…I said I’m coming out. I’ve had enough.”
And she had. In so many ways. But there was one more thing that she prayed she would soon have enough of. Rodrigo.
Any bets she never would?
It was good to face her weakness. Without self-deception, she’d be careful to plan her actions and control her responses, accept and expect no more than the medical supervision she was here for during her stay. Until it came to an end.
As it inevitably would.
Rodrigo stood outside Cybele’s quarters, all his senses converged on every sound, every movement transmitted from within.
He’d tried to walk away. He couldn’t. He’d leaned on her door, feeling her through it, tried to contain the urge to walk back in, remain close, see and hear and feel for himself that she was alive and aware.
The days during which she’d lain inert had gouged a fault line in his psyche. The past days since she’d come back, he hadn’t been able to contemplate putting more than a few minutes’ distance between them. It had been all he could do not to camp out in her room as he had during her coma. He had constantly curbed himself so he wouldn’t suffocate her with worry, counted down every second of the three hours he’d imposed on himself between visits.
After he’d controlled the urge, he’d summoned Consuelo, had dragged himself away. Then he’d heard Consuelo’s shout.
He hadn’t barged into the room only because he’d frozen with horror for the seconds it took him to realize Consuelo had exclaimed Stop, and Consuelo’s gregarious tones and Cybele’s gentler, melodic ones had carried through the door, explaining the whole situation.
Now he heard Cybele’s raised voice as she chattered with Consuelo from the bathroom. In a few minutes, Consuelo would make sure Cybele was tucked in bed and would walk out. He had to be gone before that. Just not yet.
He knew he was being obsessive, ridiculous, but he couldn’t help it. The scare was too fresh, the trauma too deep.
He hadn’t been there for Mel, and he’d died.
He had to be there for Cybele.
But to be there for her, he had to get ahold of himself. And to do that, he had to put today behind him.
It had felt like spiraling down through hell. Taking her to that airfield, realizing too late what he’d done, seeing his foster parents after months of barely speaking to them, only to give them the proof of his biggest failure. Mel’s body.
The one thing mitigating this disaster was Cybele’s memory loss. It was merciful. For her. For him, too. He didn’t know if he could have handled her grief, too, had she remembered Mel.
But-was it better to have reprieve now, than to have it all come back with a vengeance later? Wouldn’t it have been better if her grief coincided with his? Would he be able to bear it, to be of any help if she fell apart when he’d begun healing?
But then he had to factor in the changes in her.
The woman who’d woken up from the coma was not the Cybele Wilkinson he’d known the past year. Or the one Mel had said had become so volatile, she’d accused him of wanting her around only as the convenient help rolled into one with a medical supervisor-and who’d demanded a baby as proof that he valued her as his wife.
Rodrigo had at first found that impossible to believe. She’d never struck him as insecure or clingy. Just the opposite. But then her actions had proved Mel right.
So which persona was really her? The stable, guileless woman she’d been the past five days? The irritable introvert she’d been before Mel’s accident? Or the neurotic wreck who’d made untenable emotional demands of him when he’d been wrecked himself?
And if this new persona was a by-product of the accident, of her injuries, once she healed, once she regained all her memories, would she revert? Would the woman who was bantering so naturally with Consuelo, who’d consoled him and wrestled verbally with him and made him forget everything but her, disappear?
He forced himself away from the door. Consuelo was asking what Cybele would like for breakfast. In a moment she’d walk out.
He st
rode away, speculations swarming inside his head.
He was staring at the haggard stranger in mourning clothes in his bathroom mirror when he realized something.
It made no difference. Whatever the answers were, no matter what she was, or what would happen from now on, it didn’t matter.
She was in his life now. To stay.
Seven
“You don’t have post-traumatic amnesia.”
Cybele’s eyes rounded at Rodrigo’s proclamation.
Her incredulity at his statement was only rivaled by the one she still couldn’t get over; that he’d transferred a miniature hospital to his estate so he could test and chart her progress daily.
Apart from wards and ORs, he had about everything else on site. A whole imaging facility with X-ray, MRI, CT machines and even a PET scan machine, which seemed like overkill just to follow up her arm’s and head’s healing progress. A comprehensive lab for every known test to check up on her overall condition and that of her pregnancy. Then there were the dozen neurological tests he subjected her to daily, plus the physiotherapy sessions for her fingers.
They’d just ended such a session and were heading out to the barbecue house at the seafront terrace garden to have lunch, after which he’d said they’d explore more of the estate.
He was walking beside her, his brows drawn together, his eyes plastered to the latest batch of results from another dozen tests. So what did he mean, she didn’t have…?
Terrible suspicion mushroomed, clouding the perfection of the day.
Could he think she’d capitalized on a transient memory loss and had been stringing him along for the past four weeks? Or worse, that she’d never had memory loss, that she was cunning enough, with a convoluted enough agenda, to have faked it from the start?
And she blurted it out, “You think I’m pretending?”
“What?” He raised his eyes sluggishly, stared ahead into nothingness as if the meaning of her words was oozing through his mind, searching for comprehension. Then it hit him. Hard. His head jerked toward her, his frown spectacular. “No.”